Productivity @ Home: Scheduling Workout Times

Today's guest post is from Lisa Hendey of Productivity at Home. Lisa posts once a month for The Daily Saint and is our expert when it comes to integrating productive principles in the home.

I am typically a morning workout person. During the school year, myroutine is to wake early, before my sons and husband. I pray, work,and drink lots of decaf prior to waking up the rest of the house.After driving the kids to school, as many days per week as practicable,I meet a friend at the gym for an hour long workout. The rest of theschool day flies by filled with writing, web work, or othercommitments. After 2:30, I turn into driving Mom, homework helping Momand cooking Mom. I crash early most nights, preferring to be tucked inby no later than 10:30. I fall asleep before my head hits the pillow.

During the summer, the schedule falls to pieces. People sleep untilall hours of the day, my sons cook "second dinner" at 11:30 pm manynights, and my workout buddy is busy with her own summer craziness. Myfitness routine becomes a little dicey, and it doesn't help that ourFresno heat squashes my motivation to walk outside. It becomes alittle too easy to say, "I'll hit the gym tomorrow..." and skip a day(or four).

This has been happening far too often for the past two weeks. Oneof the problems with not working out is that I tend to get a little"edgy" and things that don't normally stress me out start to drive mecrazy. This was happening on Wednesday, when I was in a "martyr" stateof mind from all of the football practice inconvenience that's beengoing on in this week. Around 9:00 pm I realized that I had, yetagain, not fit in time to exercise during the day. So instead ofplopping on the couch, I tied on my walking shoes and hit the pavement.

Revolutionary? Far from it! Lots of people walk at night, but I'mnot one of them. Surprisingly, I discovered that I loved walking atthat time of night. The streets were silent, the heat was absent, andthe sky was filled with stars. I am such a creature of habit in somany ways - shaking up a few of my routines is a great thing. Thenight walk has inspired me to look at my schedule with a little lessrigidity and to be more open to using my waking hours more creatively.